We will be launching our next piece of research shortly so please do remember to sign up to the newsletter to find out when it arrives.
May 2011 One Year On: The Coalition Government and civil liberties The paper concludes that, while real progress has been made, many of the Coalition's promises to roll back the power of the state remain unfulfilled. Click here to download the report Commenting on the report, Big Brother Watch Director Daniel Hamilton said: "The Coalition has some real achievements to speak off. "Ministers should be congratulated for taking steps to scrap ID cards and remove the profiles of the one million innocent people held on the national DNA database. They should also be praised for doing away with the ContactPoint database of children’s details and reforming the criminal record check regime. "They do, however, have more work to do. "Police stop and search powers remain in place, Control Orders remain virtually unreformed and there has been no opt-out from the European Arrest Warrant. When it comes to E-Borders, the Summary Care Record and Intercept Modernisation Programme, they have continued to implement the previous government’s policies – warts and all." April 2011 Who's knocking at your door? Across the 320 local councils who responded to a Freedom of Information request from Big Brother Watch, almost six million (5,939,003) cases have been passed to bailiffs for the late payment of council taxes and parking fines. The full report, including a breakdown of the number of cases passed to bailiffs by local authority by a) overall number, b) non-payment of council tax c) parking infringements, can be found here (from page 8 onwards). Commenting on the figures Daniel Hamilton, Director of Big Brother Watch said: “Sending in bailiffs to recover debts should always be the absolute last resort. The fact local councils have passed more than six million cases to bailiffs for matters as trivial as the late payment of council taxes and parking fines is truly shocking. “In many cases, bailiffs are a law unto themselves; barging their way into people’s homes, intimidating vulnerable members of the public and imposing rip-off charges. “The Coalition Government must act now to end the culture of bully-boy debt collection which has taken hold in Town Halls across the country”. November 2010 Big Brother Watch has conducted the first study of the true cost burden of CCTV to local councils in the United Kingdom. Of the 342 local councils who responded to Big Brother Watch's information request, a total of £321,331,453.18 was spent on installing and operating CCTV cameras during the 2007 to 2010 period. October 2010 'Fight Terror, Defend Freedom' by Dominic Raab MP Click here to download the full publication. July 2010 Drive-by Spies: CCTV cars issue over £8 million in fines in just 12 months May 2010 The Grim Ripa: Local councils authorising over 11 covert surveillance operations a day on members of the public April 2010 Cataloguing the Innocent: The differing approach of police forces to the innocent profiles on the National DNA database Up to a third of DNA profiles added each year are from people later found innocent To read the full research note 'Cataloguing the Innocent', with a full analysis of the responses to our freedom of information request, click here. March 2010 Broken Records: The worrying lack of security around your medical history, and how it could be changing for the worse Research conducted by Big Brother Watch reveals that there are at least 100,000 non-medical personnel in NHS Trusts across the country with access to confidential medical records Lifting the Lid: The rising number of microchips in our rubbish bins, and why it matters December 2009 Barging In: Estimated 20,000 Council Officers in Britain Able to Enter Private Property Big Brother is Watching: Local Council controlled CCTV trebles in a decade Big Brother Watch has today (11th May) released a research paper outlining the progress the Coalition Government has made on civil liberties issues during its first year in office.
Big Brother Watch has released a report exposing the shocking extent to which councils use debt recovery agents such as bailiffs to recover unpaid council tax and parking fine debts.
The Price is Wrong: The £321 million cost of CCTV
To download the full version of The Price is Wrong, including a full breakdown by spending by local government authority, please click here.
Commenting on the staggering £321 million cost of CCTV, Big Brother Watch Director Alex Deane said:
“This is a shocking figure. Public money is being wasted on snooping surveillance that does next to nothing to prevent or solve crime. We are being watched more than ever before, and we’re being ripped off into the bargain. British taxpayers will be scandalised to see their money being thrown away like this in the current economic climate.”
Between 1997 and 2010, the last government quadrupled pre-charge detention, enacted over 3,000 new criminal offences and introduced identity cards. Random police stop and search expanded exponentially. Free speech has been undermined, whilst control orders introduced house arrest for individuals who have not been convicted of any crime. These authoritarian measures have not eliminated or substantially
reduced the threat to Britain – in September 2010, the head of MI5 warned that the terrorist threat remained ‘persistent and dangerous’, presenting a ‘serious risk of lethal attack’.
The election in May 2010 of a new government offers a unique opportunity to review UK counter-terrorism strategy. The coalition programme for government pledges to ‘be strong in the defence of freedom’, and the Home Secretary has initiated a review of counter-terrorism powers. In 'Fight Terror, Defend Freedom', Dominic Raab makes the case for restoring the core freedoms of the British citizen, whilst using the justice system – including intercept evidence– to adopt a more robust approach to prosecuting those seeking to perpetrate terror in Britain. Drive-by Spies is the is the first piece of research into the recent innovation of the CCTV Smart car; detailing the number of councils that have bought and are using the cars, the cost of the various schemes in the past year and how many people have been caught, fined and the amount these councils have accrued in fines over the past twelve months. Our research reveals that of the 25 councils that provided data, almost 188,000 people have been caught by a CCTV Smart car, generating over £8 million in revenue for local councils.
The Grim Ripa is the fifth major report released by Big Brother Watch, investigating the uses and abuses of RIPA. Our research revealed that 372 local councils in England, Scotland and Wales have authorised 8,575 Directed Surveillance and Covert Human Intelligence Source authorisations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and RIPSA in the period 1st April 2008 - 31st March 2010. Our research also found that innocent people had been placed under surveillance for minor crimes ranging from littering and dog fouling to smoking in a public place; leading to calls for the powers to be removed from council's hands completely.
Cataloguing the Innocent is a summary of our efforts to collate data on how many innocent profiles are being added by police forces in the UK and why the current system in use makes it almost impossible for England and Wales to comply with the European Court ruling requiring that they be removed.
Broken Records is an analysis of the status of confidential medical records in the UK, the security around access to sensitive personal information and how the Government’s NPfIT and Conservative private sector proposals could change the current situation. Our research reveals that there are at least 101,272 non-medical personnel – including IT staff and even hospital porters – working in NHS Acute Trusts in Britain that have access to confidential medical records. The NHS is therefore in direct contravention of the European Court of Human Rights, whose 2008 judgement ‘I v. Finland’ established a legal duty to restrict medical records only to those directly involved in personal car
Lifting the Lid analyses the privacy implications and cost to householders of installing a network of bin microchips and provides a definitive list of those local authorities that have installed the intrusive technology. Our survey reveals that there are now 68 local councils in Britain with microchips in the bins of at least 2.6 million households. Only one local authority has yet come forward to pilot one the Government’s “pay-as-you-throw” schemes in the year that they have been on offer, which strongly suggests that councils are preparing the technology at significant cost, ready for when the government announces a nationwide roll-out of charging for what the British public throw away.
Barging In is the first nationwide survey of the number of officers in each Local Authority holding the power to enter a private home or business without requiring a warrant or police escort. Through Freedom of Information requests sent to every single local council in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Big Brother Watch has arrived at a total figure for the number of environmental health technicians, anti-social behaviour officers, safety control inspectors and so on who, on 15th June 2009, if they so wished, could enter your private residence or place of work.
Research conducted by Big Brother Watch reveals that in less than 10 years the number of CCTV cameras controlled by local councils has risen from 21,000 to 60,000.
Big Brother Is Watching was the first report by Big Brother Watch bringing together the various arguments against CCTV and placing them alongside a definitive list of the number of CCTV cameras operated by Britain’s local authorities, to establish the full extent of Britain’s local authority controlled surveillance.
October 2009
Four in five people believe freedoms are being eroded in Britain
The first piece of Big Brother Watch research was polling, commissioned by Big Brother Watch and conducted by PoliticsHome, which asked 1,353 adults across the UK to give their opinions on various different measures of the big brother state; with some remarkable results.
The full breakdown of the polling is available to view here.
